NORMA RAMOS Phone: 502.842.8160 “Trafficking in Women” Fax: 502.852.4421 March 22, 2012 Chairperson: 6:00 P.M
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The Official Newsletter of the Women’s & Gender Studies Department “You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman.” –Jane Galvin Lewis Women’s and Gender ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL MINX AUERBACH LECTURE Studies Department IN WOMEN’S & GENDER STUDIES Stevenson Hall, 320 University of Louisville Louisville, KY 40292 NORMA RAMOS Phone: 502.842.8160 “Trafficking in Women” Fax: 502.852.4421 March 22, 2012 Chairperson: 6:00 p.m. Dr. Nancy Theriot, [email protected] Speed Museum Auditorium Core Faculty: There will be a reception following the lecture. Dr. Karen Christopher This event is free and open to the public. Dr. Catherine Fosl Paid Parking is available in the Speed Museum Garage. If you need further Dr. Dawn Heinecken information or require accommodations in order to participate fully in this Dr. Kaila Story event, please call 852-8160 or email [email protected] Dr. Diane Pecknold Dr. Nancy Theriot co-sponsored by Administrative Staff: Jan Rayburn, [email protected] Norma Ramos is a longstanding public attorney and social justice activist. As an eco- feminist, she links worldwide inequality and Graduate Assistants: destruction of women to the destruction of the Erin Phelps, Teaching Assistant environment. She writes and speaks Jennifer Stith extensively about the sexual exploitation of Alisha West women and girls as a core of global injustice, and has appeared on such shows as Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, as well as national radio programs. Ramos was an early environmental justice activist. She works to build an environmental movement that addresses inequalities based on race, gender and class. Ramos is the recipient of the Women’s Committee Award and the Flor De Maga award, both from the Puerto Rican Bar Association. She was also recently awarded the Humanist Heroine Award 2009 from the American Humanist Association. She is the former Executive Director of the Rainforest Foundation. Currently, she is the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, which is the first organization to fight against human trafficking internationally, now in its twenty-first year. She Graduate Students Celebrate the end also serves on the board of the National Hispanic Environmental Council. For more information of the 2011 Spring Semester on the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, please visit: http://www.catwinternational.org. Page 1 That leaves the rumor that graduate AW: What are your specific academic/ school is a “lonely” time. Perhaps my research interests? general misanthropy prevented me from CF: 20th century American social, political, women's history; post-1945 US fully experiencing undergrad's boisterous social movements, especially the modern social networking. Or maybe I just US civil rights movement; biography, haven't reached the haven't-left-the- oral, history, autobiography and memoir house-for-two-weeks-because-I'm- writing-a-dissertation stage of graduate AW: What is your favorite thing about school yet. But our little department's your job? intimate atmosphere is very much to my CF: It allows me to work with such a wide range of people and it allows me to liking, and I've made a lot more friends investigate the things I love to find out than I had expected to make in the short more about. Any job can get boring at Kate Meyers & Clone Friend time of a semester. So thanks everyone, times, but this one never stays that way for making this difficult transition period for more than a minute...it never fails MY FIRST SEMESTER AS A WGS of my life so much easier. The to present me with cool and unexpected people and ideas. GRADUATE STUDENT commiseration, party snack-age, tons of support and advice have made me feel by Kate Meyers AW: What is your favorite thing to do welcome during a time I expected to be away from work? Before I came to Louisville, I had lonely. Here's to a spring semester just as CF: I love to do yoga, take long walks, heard two things about graduate school: hard as the last, but full of the support our read and watch movies. (1) that it was much harder than little community offers. undergrad and (2) it would be "a lonely AW: Would you like to tell us about your time." Neither of these rumors chased me family? away from applying, largely because the In order for our community to CF: I have a partner who is also a scholar alternative of getting a full time job and and a writer (a philosophy professor at get to know each other more, Transylvania in Lexington), and 2 young- becoming a "real" adult scared the hell this newsletter will feature adult sons--well, my youngest is a senior out of me. Commitment anxieties aside, in high school so this year is a big turning now that my first semester as a master's interviews with faculty, point for us and I will soon be an "empty student is over I have time to reflect about alumni, and current students. nester." whether or not my grad school We hope you enjoy! expectations live up to the reality. Turns AW: What is your favorite restaurant in Louisville? out, only one of the things I had heard MEET CATE FOSL CF: Probably Mayan Cafe about grad school was right. I think you by Alisha West & Cate Fosl can guess which one. AW: Do you have any advice or insight Graduate school is hard, you guys (or AW: Where are you from? for students thinking about pursuing should I say “gals” because we're mostly CF: I'm from Atlanta, GA though I spent degrees in the area of Women's and women? It kind of makes me sound like most of my childhood on a dairy farm 40 Gender Studies? my mom's 70-year-old cousin, so I'll pass. mi south of there. CF: Be ready to read a lot and learn a lot, turning upside down some of what you But you know what I mean). You don't learned growing up. Do it from passion, need to be told this because you've been AW: What prompted you to become a not from ambition. It is a field that is the living it for at least the last few months, gender studies professor? outcome of a lot of social movement- but what we're doing is difficult work. CF: It was a long odyssey. I was the 1st building, so the knowledge is politicized Despite our work being “school” work person in my family to go to college or and subject to controversy. Don’t be and only preparation for the “real world,” even to finish high school, so I never afraid to get into the fray to advance that knowledge and the causes from which it which is a debatable statement I'm too imagined myself as a professor. My first springs. At the same time, be a lover of lazy to get into here, it is just as arduous career was as a journalist, then I became a justice and be aware that you need allies... and valid as the work of all those squares social worker, then a community and alliances are hard work. who, you know, actually get paid for what organizer, so all of those jobs led me to they do. So the next time you're where I am now. The common thread in explaining what you're doing with your all of them is my passion for collecting life to a family member or overly- women's stories and for feminist and inquisitive stranger, and dealing with the wider social justice activism. What I do inevitable “What will you do with that now is mainly women's history, yet my degree?” response, remember that I think work has always been interdisciplinary so you're awesome. And my opinion is the I have tended to feel more at home in an only one that matters. No, seriously. It is. interdisciplinary department. Cate Fosl on a trip to Athens, May 2010 Page 2 A LETTER FROM THE CHAIR OF WGS by Dr. Nancy Theriot Students and members of the public have often asked me about the origins of “women’s studies” at the University of Louisville, so I thought this might be a good topic for readers of our first student-produced newsletter. Unlike traditional departments, which begin with curriculum, faculty, physical space, and departmental status more or less at the same time, WGS developed over a period of thirty years. The first course on women or gender was offered in 1973 by Lucy Freibert in the English Department: “Women and Literature.” Faculty in other departments gradually began to offer courses having to do with women or feminism over the next ten years. Not until the mid-1980s did feminist faculty from several A&S departments get together to form a minor in women’s studies, with faculty taking turns ‘directing’ the minor over the next ten years. The undergraduate major in women’s studies was approved in 1995, the year the program (not department) was finally provided office space and a part-time program assistant. Dawn Heinecken became our first faculty member in 2000. Departmental status came a few years later, followed by approval of the M.A. curriculum, and a name change to ‘women’s and gender studies” by 2005. While this origin story differs from that of English, Biology, Political Science, etc., it is similar to many women’s studies, women’s and gender studies, gender/sexualities studies, black studies, pan-African studies, ethnic studies,… departments nationwide. All of these share an interdisciplinary method and social justice framework, with roots in social movements; and most began, like WGS at UofL, with a small group of faculty engaged in a new area of scholarship.